Some councils like locking their information away. But just as certain government departments are releasing their data to developers, so should local councils. Lichfield Council is one leading the way and this post by Stuart Harrison explains why

Last week, I wrote a post about creating your own personal news wire using RSS – but what if a website you want to monitor doesn’t have RSS? UCLAN expert Andy Dickinson has created a great guide on how to make a feed yourself – regardless of which site it is.

Post from Paul Bradshaw following on from c&binet, one of what appears to have been a huge number of conferences in the last week or so, about what government can do to help local journalism. The idea of an independent council news network seems a particularly good idea – although offering it up to the BBC would potentially create one media body that was far too powerful.